I just finished the demo. There's a lot going for it.
I'm usually unable to get into tactical RPGS because they're these impersonal sequences of murderboxes but what this game does is what Shining Force used to and Three Houses somewhat recently did in providing a space to wander around and explore a little in the intermissionary scenes between battles and story scenes, and even more impressively it ties that play space into the central moral convictions that guide the characters, through the voting processes they undertake to decide on a course of action, and the opportunity given to the player in trying to persuade others to the cause you want to support. The game's driven by a lot of the Tactics Ogre-informed obscured morality that the game stresses at every turn that it won't lift the veil on as far as the immediate consequences or explicitly reveal the protagonist's own player-informed standing. Just the ability to linger in the diorama spaces and poking around in them or rotating the camera at will makes me more invested in this than something purely menu-driven would've accomplished.
The character designer is the same as in Octopath, and there are actually some pretty awesome female character designs here, and over the course of the demo the playable roster (at least according to the choices I made) had women eclipse the men in number. The biggest point of criticism is that Ikushima has trouble or is not interested in providing much of a body diversity at all for the cast, with men having some variance to support archetypes but women getting nothing but thin and fit. Still, you've got a powerhouse woman general clad in full armour with no boobplate and somewhat atypical facial features according to how beauty standards in this kind of art style goes as a dominating antagonistic force, and lots of other interesting stuff that makes me want to see more on that front too.
Is the writing good? Hard to really say from the self-admitted in medias res vertical slice offered here, though I followed the character relations just fine. It seems like storytelling mostly invested in a lot of machinations and moving parts so if that intrigues it can deliver that in a compellingly dry way. The writing staff doesn't seem like the same people as Octopath, which to me is promising, as I loathed a lot of what that game did, and if aesthetics are what will carry over the most, then this is better off for it. And it does look like something one might have daydreamed about for the way it embodies that kind of miniature dollhouse presentation that eventually codified around its inspirational models.
Biggest surprise: it's being developed by Artdink. Wha?